Have you ever wondered who goes through all the reported content and decides it's unsuitable for the website? They are content moderators. They go through all the reported content, which includes murder, rape, child abuse, beheadings, and remove it from the internet to make the internet a safer place.

What about them? Watching these horrific videos every day must definitely impact their mental health. Selena Scola, a former Facebook moderator, is suing the company as she claims that the images and videos she had to view gave her post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Facebook does have a voluntary code for training, supporting and counseling the content moderators but failed to abide by its guidelines. They are not doing what they are supposed to protect their content moderators from being scarred. The moderators are expected to watch the videos but are not trained on how to deal with the stress that it causes.

Scola has suffered from insomnia, fatigue, social anxiety before she was diagnosed with PTSD. She is triggered by loud noises, violence on TV and touching a computer mouse.

There needs to be proper care provided for content moderators to prevent this from happening. There should be a mandatory rotation, more time off and weekly meetings with a therapist.

Facebook said on the subject, "We recognize that this work can often be difficult. That is why we take the support of our content moderators incredibly seriously, starting with their training, the benefits they receive, and ensuring that every person reviewing Facebook content is offered psychological support and wellness resources.

Facebook employees receive these in-house and we also require companies that we partner with for content review to provide resources and psychological support, including on-site counseling––available at the location where the plaintiff worked––and other wellness resources like relaxation areas at many of our larger facilities."

Facebook has also since said that they are providing mental health resources such as counselors and full health care benefits to content moderators. If you are thinking abut getting a job as a content moderator, make sure to go through all the pros and cons before settling for this work.

I think this was a good thing that further content moderators will be provided with the care they need. On the other hand, all the previous employees that may have suffered from it will not get to prevent it from happening.